Arsenic Lobster Poetry Journal Poem

Arsenic Lobster poetry journal	Final Issue 2018
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Bloodlines
Juliet Cook

I fantasized about barbed wire.

I grew up sheltered, strung
in between other people’s pieces,
so overprotected I felt the need to rip myself out

through a jagged fence
in order to see for myself,
name my own blood.

Then I started flooding
in too many different directions,
unable to control my own flow.

I didn’t want to be rigid,
but I didn’t know what I wanted
so I bent into all sorts of drenched shapes.

I ripped out every list of directions and lost it.

* This poem also appears within the chapbook, From One Ruined Human to Another (CWP Collective Press, 2018),
available here: //www.cwpcollectivepress.com/bookstore-1/from-one-ruined-human-to-another.

About Juliet Cook

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